Social nostalgia of residents of the large industrial city

Abstract

The article analyzes results of empirical sociological research conducted in late 2015 in Togliatti, a large industrial city of the Samara Region. The article also uses the data of monitoring the mood of the people of Togliatti, including the crisis period of 2008. The sociological survey touched on the subject of «return» to the Soviet era of the early 1980s and the relationship between a sense of social nostalgia and an estimate of current human life, confidence or no confidence in the future. The article analyses the relationship between the sense of social nostalgia with various aspects of social life, such as the assessment of the social and economic realities of the present day, socio-demographic characteristics of the residents of Togliatti, social well-being of different generations of residents. In addition, the authors analyse the relationship between the sense of social nostalgia with the following factors of social behaviour in an internal or external localisation of responsibility for their financial situation, evaluation and attitude to the strategy of reform, social change or preserving stability in society, economic crisis and the level of protest the residents of a large industrial city. The article describes the size and composition of the group of nostalgic citizens, identifies the factors of a sense of social nostalgia and draws conclusions about the distribution of the nostalgic sentiments in the society. The sense of social nostalgia is not so massive. However the category of nostalgic people, not being significant in size, has shown a willingness to defend their ideals (the ideals of the past) and accumulating the protest potential of residents. Refs 15. Figs 8. Tables 6.